Beans and Travel

March 21, 2007

Today I’m going to be blogging ‘bout the bourgeoning Bamoise bean business. Kongoussi (and the rest of the province of Bam) is the center of Burkina’s green bean industry, and over the past two months I’ve spent some time seeing the green bean harvest in action, and I find it fairly interesting, so I’m going to write about it here. For those of you who are unimaginative and fail to see the inherent excitement in discussing green bean production and export, you can skip ahead to the more mundane parts of this blog entry, such as the part where my parents and I were nearly charged by a herd of wild elephants. Also, by popular demand, I’m trying to include a few more pictures in this entry to jazz things up a little bit. [I'm also using the "new, improved Blogger" for the first time, which seems to be roughly the same, except that it insists that I speak Italian, which makes it a little more difficult to navigate the site. I would understand if it gave me a French interface - but Italian? As Gob would say, Come On!]

Haricots, Haricots, les Fruits Magiques

As you may recall from a recent, critically-acclaimed cinematic masterpiece about Kongoussi (see my previous entry if you don’t recall this), the city is located on a lake (Lake Bam). Running the entire length of the lake’s shores are small parcels of irrigated farmland. Several crops are grown in these fields – carrots, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, onions. But all of these crops are sold locally – except for green beans, which are this area’s only exported cash crop (not entirely true – I recently learned that we also export some tomatoes to Ghana – but green beans are the only thing we export to Europe). Green beans are big money around here – during the green bean harvest (January – March), they dictate a lot of people’s schedules – I regularly have meetings postponed or cancelled because the people I’m supposed to meet with are busy down at their field, picking beans.

So here’s how the process works. Most of the fields along the lake are owned and operated by small associations of local farmers. For example, an association might have 50 farmers, and each farmer is given 10x50 meters of the association’s land. All of the land is irrigated by a large system of pumps and pipes – in Kongoussi, most of the irrigation system was paid for by the German government. I don’t think any of the irrigation systems in the area were actually paid for by Burkinabé – they’ve all been funded by European or American governments and NGOs. The associations (whose money generally comes from the dues of its members) are usually responsible for the maintenance costs of the irrigation systems – in Kongoussi, this usually means paying the electric company for the power needed to run the pumps; in more remote locations the association buys the gasoline necessary to run the pumps.

During the harvest, which begins in January and tapers off into March, people are constantly in their fields. First, they pick the beans off the plants. After picking the beans comes the more tedious task of quality control – individually inspecting each bean to make sure it doesn’t have any holes in it, or any bugs living in it, and making sure they’re the right size (beans that are too small or too big are the ones that they usually keep for themselves to eat). Since the beans are for export to Europe, all the rules on quality control are dictated by some unseen entity back in France.

There’s a large cooperative of green beans growers based in Kongoussi, called SCO-BAM. Every few days, a refrigerated truck comes up from Ouaga and parks outside the SCO-BAM building. On these days, everyone brings their beans to the cooperative and sells them. The going rate is 300CFA (about 60 cents) for 1 kilo of green beans – which works out to about 25-30 cents per pound. Once the truck is full, it heads back to Ouaga, and the beans are loaded on a plane that night, shipped directly to France, where they’re sold in supermarkets. As of this year, a lot of beans are also being shipped to Italy, where they’re being sold under the fair trade brand “Terra Equa”. Interestingly, Terra Equa’s web site says Burkinabé growers earn 80 euro-cents (about 525CFA or $1.05) per kilo for beans, despite the fact that all the farmers I’ve talked to say they make 300CFA per kilo.

So although 60 cents per kilo may not sound like much, it’s a lot of money around here. Except for a few areas in the south of Burkina, Kongoussi (and the surrounding villages) is the only place in Burkina that exports green beans, and they form a significant part of the local economy. Kongoussi has a population of about 25,000 – the green bean cooperative has about 6,000 members, which can give you some sense of the size of the industry here. At any rate, if you find yourself at a supermarket in France or Italy anytime soon, be sure to buy some green beans!

Traveling with the Parents

Back in January, my parents came to Burkina for two weeks. It was good to see the parents again, and was also fun to be able to be a tourist for a bit and see some parts of Burkina that I wouldn’t have gone to (or been able to afford to visit) on my own.

[First picture: this is where we stayed in Oursi.]

Their trip began with a day in Ouaga, mostly spent exploring the large urban park in the center of town, where Mom and Dad drooled over all the exotic birds. Then we went up to Kongoussi for a day – they got to see a bit of the town, meet a bunch of people. Feeling adventurous (and socially obligated in the situation), they even tried tô, the ground millet dish that, while the staple of the Burkinabé diet, is not exactly a culinary treat (nor is it particularly gentle on an unaccustomed digestive system). They also got a tour of the town – seeing the market, the credit union where I work, etc., and met some friends from my English club (who are always on the prowl for English speakers).

[Second picture: my parents, somewhere in the sand dunes of the Sahel desert. I love the cell phone tower in the background.]

After Kongoussi, our next destination was the Sahel, specifically a small village named Oursi in the very north of Burkina. We stayed at a small campement there, spending the nights inside a Tuareg hut. (The Tuaregs are one of the main ethnic groups that live in the Sahelian parts of Burkina – they are traditionally a nomadic people, so their huts are built of portable straw mats, unlike the more stationary mud-brick huts that are the norm elsewhere in Burkina -- see the first picture) While staying in Oursi, we rented camels and rode them out to the sand dunes, where we then hiked around for awhile. The sand dunes are amazing, though – they have a very Sahara-esque feel. Oursi is also home to an archeological dig (a large part of which was funded by the American government) and museum, which we spent an afternoon exploring. The site was essentially a village, from about the tenth century, which had been destroyed and burned by some unknown invader. It was fascinating to hear the explanations of how they figured various things out about the people who used to live there, and also kind of disturbing how similar their living conditions were to the people who still inhabit the area today. And, of course, Oursi is also a birding hot-spot – home to a large lake, where my parents spent a bunch of time staring off at who-knows-what with their binoculars.

[Third picture: My dad riding a camel. I hope this goes out on their Christmas cards next year.]

The other major destinations we visited were two national parks in the southeast corner of Burkina. The first is called W, and is actually a giant park spanning three countries: Burkina, Benin, and Niger. We stayed at a lodge in the park – right along the border – and used that as a base for animal watching day trips. There were tons of antelope, buffalo, something I’d never heard of called, I believe, a dyker, various baboons and monkeys, hippos, and a whole bunch of other assorted animals – our guide didn’t speak English, which sometimes made it a bit difficult to figure out what the animal off in the distance was that he was pointing to. Every morning, as we ate our breakfast, we watched baboons in a tree across the river eating their breakfast. And at night, we could hear lions making noise off in the distance.

[Fourth picture: My mom and Abga, our guide at W National Park.]

Unfortunately, we didn’t see any elephants at W. So we decided to spend a day going through a neighboring park, Arly, where the odds were much better of seeing some elephants. We arrived at the park about lunchtime, and stopped at the village that’s the entrance to the park. As we sat on a bench outside the guard station eating our lunch, a bunch of kids from the village came and started watching us eat (this is very normal – especially in more rural, remote areas, nothing seems to fascinate kids like sitting around and watching foreigners). Meanwhile, as the kids gazed intently at us, we were busy watching the large baboon who kept inching closer and closer to us. The kids kept asking us to give them our water bottle (which we eventually did), while the baboon was clearly eyeing our food (and our guide eventually tossed him some – so much for not feeding the animals). I found the whole thing very amusing just because for these village kids, seeing a baboon from ten feet away was nothing extraordinary, but seeing white people from ten feet away was. Anyways, after a little while driving around the park, we saw an elephant off in the distance, and got out and took the mandatory pictures. A few hours later, we stumbled onto an entire herd. However, initially we didn’t realize how big the herd was, so our driver stopped almost as soon as we saw them. This proved to be a mistake, as there were
some baby elephants in the herd, and the overprotective alpha male grew suspicious of this large SUV. So this large elephant began to approach us, waving its ears (which apparently is a sign that the elephant senses danger and is preparing to charge), and our guide frantically yelled at our driver to go, which he wisely did.

[Fifth picture: the baboon who came surprisingly close to us to try and steal our lunch. Not pictured: the children who were far more interested in seeing us than the baboon.]

And that, more or less, was my trip with my parents. We also spent a bit of time in Ouaga – found some souvenirs, took advantage of the swimming pool at the embassy, etc. They both seemed to enjoy their time here, and my mom especially seems pretty intent on trying to come back sometime or, save that, at least keeping in touch with some of the people she met here.

Traveling with Brian


Speaking of traveling around Burkina, my friend Brian from Pomona visited recently. His visit began with the obligatory trip to Kongoussi, including a tour of town (including the exciting green bean fields!) and taking tea with a friend of mine.

[Sixth picture: The Cascades]

Our next destination was Boromo, a town that marks the halfway point between Ouaga and Bobo. The city itself is nothing special, but we spent a day visiting a national park just outside of town. The Deux Balé Reserve is one of the best places in Burkina for seeing elephants (and the most easily accessible one – when my parents came, we rented a car and driver to visit the parks – but for Brian the med student and Chris the Peace Corps volunteer, renting a car was a bit out of our price range). We arrived mid-afternoon, and spent about an hour wandering around with a guide looking for some animals, but didn’t really see anything. The next morning we tried again, this time stumbling upon a dead cobra, then a large group of red monkeys running by in the distance, and finally, a herd of about a dozen elephants. Unlike when I’d been with my parents, we were on foot, with no car to jump into, so we tried to keep a reasonable distance between ourselves and the herd, especially given the fact that there were some young-uns in there. But the cool thing at Boromo was that we spent about an hour just following the herd, watching them eat and do whatever else it is that elephants do.


From Boromo, we went southwest towards Banfora. I’d never been to Banfora before, and was amazed by how green everything was down there. Kongoussi hasn’t had rain in about five months at this point, but clearly Banfora has. We borrowed some bikes from a few Peace Corps volunteers down there, and biked about 10km or 15km to the famous Cascades – a large waterfall. The waterfall was pretty cool – it had several different levels, and you could climb around the rocks and really get as close to any part of the waterfall as you wanted. From there, we walked to the Domes – the other big tourist draw in the Banfora area. The Domes are these huge rock formations – like the Cascades, you can just wander around on them, slowly climbing up to the top. The pictures I’m including here hardly do justice, mostly because you don’t get a real appreciation for their size. However, in one of these pictures, if you look closely, you can see a guy riding by on a bike, which should give you some sense of scale.

[Last two pictures: the Domes, near Banfora. The second one has a guy on a bike to the right of the large rock in the middle.]

From Banfora, it was back to Ouaga, where we visited the obligatory Artisan Village and embassy swimming pool, as well as going to Sunday mass at the Catholic cathedral in Ouaga – a place I’d never been before. The architecture of the cathedral was interesting – it was very clearly a cathedral, with large columns, statues of Mary, some buttresses – but it was also very African, with a roof of corrugated metal and a bizarre pink paint job. The cathedral was packed with people (and there were more outside), and yet among the hundreds of people there, we saw maybe half a dozen other white people – one of whom was the priest celebrating the mass.

Other Travels

So in addition to traveling with Brian and with my parents, in February I went and visited three other volunteers (Kara, Anna, and Leslie) that live near me – they’ve all been to Kongoussi before (two of them come pretty regularly), and I finally went and visited their villages (ostensibly, at least with Leslie’s village, to do a training on savings and credit clubs). Seeing their villages certainly gave me an appreciation for Kongoussi (which is definitely not a village), as well as for how different their living situations are from mine. Leslie and Anna are both health volunteers, and I got to help them with baby weighings, which are pretty chaotic – a group of maybe 60 women, all with at least one baby, in a space maybe 20x20 feet, all pushing to the front to try and get their baby weighed. There’s no concept here of forming an orderly line – the chaos gave it an almost refugee-camp feel. My job at both places was to write down the measurements while Leslie and Anna actually weighed the kids and handled all the communication (in Mooré) with the women. And despite the fact that I wasn’t actually handling the babies, a lot of them still managed to pee on me – “yeah, I never wear clean clothes on baby weighing day,” Leslie casually mentioned to me after the fact.

I also spent a weekend in Ouahigouya with Giorgio and David (two volunteers based in Ouahigouya) entertaining a group of three Germans whose foundation has just agreed to fund the cybercafé we’re starting at a high school there. This is exciting news, as we’ve been trying to get this cybercafé started for about a year and a half. I also went down to Ouaga for the end of Fespaco, the biennial African film festival, and managed to catch a few movies, including Blood Diamond and Last King of Scotland, although both were disappointingly dubbed into French. (Blood Diamond’s “TIA” became “CCA” in French – Ca C’est l’Afrique.) And I went back to the U.S. for three weeks at the end of November, which was a nice little break from Burkina, as well as a golden opportunity to stock up on Skittles.

And Whatever Else

So this blog entry makes it look like I haven’t really spent any time in Kongoussi in awhile, which is not the case – it’s just that I haven’t blogged anything in several months. In fact, there was even a short period of time when I was suddenly prohibited from traveling – right before Christmas, when the police and military started fighting each other on the streets of Ouaga – which, luckily, blew over quickly. However, nothing terribly exciting has been happening recently in Kongoussi. Since coming back from America, I’ve been on a push to setup some savings and credit clubs – I’ve gotten at least seven new ones started, including one with some men, which is more-or-less unheard of. The hot season has finally started – I think it snuck in while I was traveling with Brian. The temperature is now regularly reaching 45 or 46 (113-115) on my thermometer in the shade during mid-day, and the harmattan winds that have been keeping things cool for the past few months have finally subsided. And I have about two or three solid months of this to look forward to. I’m starting to plan a few final projects before leaving in September. I’d like to do another computer camp at the high school this summer, which I’m starting to formulate the details of. And I’ve had several requests from friends in Kongoussi to teach some sort of English night classes, so I think I’m going to try to get started on that in the coming weeks. I still don’t have any idea what I’m going to do when I’m done with Peace Corps – I’ll leave Kongoussi around the end of September or early October. I’ll probably travel a bit at that point, and try to be home in time for Thanksgiving, and then… well, if you know anyone who’s hiring (or if you have a nice couch that’s going unused…), send me an e-mail.